With Hillary Clinton and Ed Miliband flying the flag for centre-left politics in their respective countries (with the caveat that centre-left in the US is not the same as centre-left in the UK), both have come under heavy fire from the right, the enemies of change spewing forth an infected gut of personal attacks.

Sex was also being used in Britain, with old media behemoths The Daily Mail and The Telegraph painting the dowdy and professorial Miliband as a socialist lothario, with a “tangled love life” and scores of “secret romances.”This from the Mail: “Not only did he knife his elder brother in the back by ending his dream of getting the Labour leadership by standing against him (contrary to the wishes of their mother) but he met his future wife Justine (albeit unwittingly) at that dinner party hosted by his then girlfriend.”